Quora looks similar to many other Q&A sites, and indeed, the basic format hasn’t changed. However, a few things Quora handles particularly well are the profile, the feed, and the search. When starting an account, Quora emphasizes ties to either Twitter or Facebook and insists that you use your real name. The real identity becomes especially important as your name and title accompany each answer. While anonymous answers and questions are an option, a real identity and relevant title greatly increase the answer’s credibility. This becomes particularly important when insiders answer questions about their company, often the case for questions about Quora itself, Twitter, or even Google.

Much like Facebook’s newsfeed (the two founders came from Facebook, after all), Quora provides questions and answers that should be relevant for each user. Not only can users follow topics, but they can also follow other users or particular questions to be notified of any new answers. As you develop your interests, the newsfeed becomes more interesting to explore as new things are constantly popping up.

The search bar at the top helps users find the content they need with suggestions much like Google’s, and by combining search with the question input field, redundant questions also get rooted out. Quora seeks to keep duplicate questions out, so users only have to find one place for the information they need. Once the right question is found, the answers are ranked by various up-votes and down-votes much like Digg, so the relevant information comes easily.

These features, an overall smooth performance, and a little bit of the right publicity have created a user experience that attracted many of the Silicon Valley insiders that laud the service. This emphasis has helped create valuable and high-quality content in a relatively niche subject. However, the scope of this subject has reached beyond just the tech world. Other topics such as politics, food, science, movies and business have good followings that have developed high quality answers. Already, I have found Quora to be a great way to learn about new topics such as cooking and real estate at a moderate depth. This way, you gain a little personality in your answers and also avoid much of the lower quality advice that can creep to the top of some Google searches.

I happen to eat through Quora’s content like candy, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to it in sight. However, I rarely feel guilty about spending my time there as I’m constantly learning new things, finding new viewpoints, or keeping up on relevant topics. If you are unfamiliar with this site, I strongly suggest you check it out. Chances are you’ll learn something.

My Mumbai Social Circle

I was reading a blog post from Small Business SEM’s Matt McGee this morning in which he referenced a search result for “small business reputation management“. So I clicked the link and got the following results set:

Results for Small Business Reputation managerment

In case it’s not obvious, you can see in the image above two referenced blog posts from sites I frequent run by industry friends Matt McGee and Outspoken Media (Lisa Barone).

My first thought was “Wow, that’s kind of cool. I wonder why Mat Siltala‘s not there” .

And then I drilled down to see what was driving this particular social graph. It’s interesting to see where Google draws data regardless and in this case, more so because assumptions are being made about my likes and dislikes in this Google, My Social Circle by inference from other sites I frequent.

My Social Circle - Reminiscent of LinkedIn's Degrees of separation

As you can see My Social Circle includes:

• Direct connections from Google Chat buddies,
• Direct connections from sites such as Twitter and FriendFeed (that’s a lot of data)
• Secondary Connections linked by inference to my direct connections

So basically, Google has digested all of the data from those accounts I have listed on my personal Google Profile page and used them to assemble this My Social Circle idea. And, with my social circle defined, my search results are further personalized.

This is a good thing right? Google’s trying to help out and give me what I’m looking for, right?

Maybe.

At this point the implementation is pretty mild. It’s a nice leverage of the data available thanks to the Google Personal Profile page – personal profile pages which are all the more prominent thanks to buzz. And, my position that the implementation is mild is based on my usage.

I’m a business user and I keep it clean. I may be occasionally smart-alecky but other than that I don’t have anthing online I don’t want my mother to see.

If this isn’t you if you might have something to hide, and particularly if you browse on a public or work computer, you may want to reconsider whether Buzz is for you. While the idea of my industry friends who blog showing up in search results is OK for me, it might not be OK for you. And, even if you’re squeaky clean, Google sometimes gets it wrong.

Have you seen any examples of this? What searches? I’d love to see screen shots.